Different Canyon, Same Idiots
by The Infinite Forest
Summary: Do you ever wonder why we're here? Mass Effect x Red vs. Blue fusion.
1. New Recruit

_AN: Hi! this is an experiment. Not exactly in co-writing, since neither of us can quite figure out how Sir Terry and Neil Gaiman do it, but definitely in sharing a universe.  
This is the first chapter of said experiment, written by me, periferal. The "Spanish" is what you get when you run English through a few languages and then put the resulting mess into "Spanish."  
The Mass Effect crossover is mainly in a universe sense. You will see people you recognize, mostly from Red Vs. Blue. The chronology is going to be scattered, as we figure out what on Earth (or wherever) we are doing._

 **A box canyon, as a familiar tune plays...**

Griff saw the geth first.

 _Maybe if I just ignore it, and walk past it, it will ignore me back and I can go to my bunk and take a nap_ , he thought.

It would only be his third nap of the day, which was nowhere near enough naps.

It was standing, unmoving, on the patch of inexplicably undying grass right in front of red base.

He was about half way past it when Simmons yelped. At his yelp, the geth swiveled, and raised its gun. "El senor es malvado. El senor es malvado." It said this in a very flat voice.

"Is that... Spanish?" Griff asked. He was so confused he stopped thinking about the nap.

The door to the base opened, and Sarge stepped out. He immediately started shaking his head. "No, _no_ , you're supposed to _shoot Griff_ , not warn me about Simmons! Why would you warn me about Simmons? Simmons, is there anything you're doing I should be warned about?"  
"Yes, sir! I mean, no, sir!" Griff turned to look at Simmons, who was saluting.

"Quienes son estos valientes?" asked the geth. That was definitely Spanish.

"Thank you for reminding me, Lopez!" Sarge said. Did Sarge speak Spanish? Griff was pretty sure Sarge did not speak Spanish. "This is Lopez! Red Command sent us some mechs, and they were really bad at holding guns, so I combined them with one of those dead geth we have lying around for some reason, fiddled with some basic VI, and now we have a robot who is both extremely loyal to me, and good at holding a gun!"

"Tu. Fucking. Odio."

"I think you're great too, Lopez! Definitely better than Griff!"

"Sir, isn't this incredibly illegal?" Simmons asked.

Sarge walked over to Simmons. "Son, would I ever do anything illegal?"

"You stole Blue Team's turret that one time."

"All is fair in love and war, Simmons!"

Griff used the arguing, which continued, as an opportunity to sneak into the base.

This was going to suck.


	2. Marksman

_Hi, folks! This is periferal's pseudo-cowriter, CuChulainnX19. Welcome to the first foray into the other half of our experiment, "many years ago" (from the perspective of those idiots in a canyon somewhere)..._

* * *

Agent North Dakota exhaled and waited for the moment between heartbeats, then fired and fired again. Two more faceless—mercenaries? pirates? terrorists?—dropped to the ground, and South darted forward into the base. The Mantis was lighter than he liked, but it could get up to a good rate of fire in skilled hands, excellent for high-target-density operations.

"South, remember, I don't have eyes in there. Did you set your tracker?"

They hadn't found any signs as to the identities of the men and women or the organization they were fighting, save a few leftover emblems of Conatix Industries.

"I can watch out for myself, North," his sister responded, irritation as clear as the implication that she had not, in fact, set her motion tracker.

The Project was a far cry from fighting batarians in the Skyllian Verge, to be sure, but North had faith that their work still mattered. South, for her part, had her eyes on a nearer goal, and it appeared that this was one more time when the leaderboard would drive her to push herself too far, too fast—and just as that thought coalesced in his mind, the air was rent with sirens.

"So much for quiet," the violet ex-N6 muttered as he collapsed his rifle and dropped to the catwalk below his position, catching the two guards he landed behind by their helmets and knocking them out cold.

He met up with South quickly, blowing away several more goons with his Mantis as he jumped down to her level before shoulder-rolling into CQC to give another grunt some abdominal surgery with his Locust. The siblings moved as one from there, swapping weapons as necessary and carving unstoppably through their opponents until they found themselves alone on a landing pad, surrounded on all sides by a catwalk full of soldiers.  
"I think I can take about fifty of 'em, how about you?" South asked.

"How about you save your jokes until we get out of this?" North retorted. He could try putting up a barrier dome. Hells, he might even be able to sustain it. But without extraction in sight, he would only be wasting energy, and without a connection to the command server, the risk to his implants would be astronomical for a very small chance that he'd be able to form the dome at all.

Then he saw the flicker of a dissolving tactical cloak on the catwalk, and the tables turned again.


	3. Nice Tank Lady

_AN: Periferal again. Why did I decide to do Caboose's perspective? I don't know, but here it is. This is a brief check in on the Blues, who just got a special delivery. Disclaimer: the opinions espoused within emphatically reflect that of the management._

* * *

"Why the hell did they give us a Mako," Church grumped. Church was always grumpy, but that was okay. Even when he was grumpy with Caboose, he knew that they were still friends.

"Hey, at least we have some kind of car. Means I can-"

"Stop right there. I can't deal with you right now, I have to deal with the fact that command has given us a _brick_."

Tucker made a hand gesture that Caboose did not understand, and wandered away. That was good, he thought. Tucker was always confusing Caboose.

"I think she's pretty," Caboose said.

"Who? 'Cause if you're talking about Tucker-actually if you are talking about Tucker I don't want to know." Church pulled the car's door open.

"Her," Caboose said. He pointed, this time.

"Oh, Christ," Church said. He seemed concerned, though of course Caboose could only see his eyes so maybe he was happy instead.

He said something else, but Caboose ignored him. He wanted to see what the inside of the pretty car looked like.

It was dark inside the car, and there were not really any windows. There was a screen though, and he could see Church on it.

As soon as he sat down, a nice voice said, "Hello! This model of Mako has been deemed too difficult for humans to steer on their own. I am here to help."

He looked around to see where the voice was coming from. When he didn't see anybody, he asked, "Who are you, nice lady?"

"I am the assistant VI for this model of Mako all terrain vehicle. My name is Sheila."

"That's a pretty name!" Caboose said.

"Would you like to review the tutorial?"

"Sure!" Caboose said. He wasn't entirely sure what a tutorial was, but it sounded like fun.

Suddenly, he could see outside. "Magic windows!" he said.

"The Mako has false windows so that a driver might see outside and retain full benefit of the heavy armor," Sheila said.

"Oh, okay!" Caboose said. "How do you drive this?"

"Drive command accepted."

The world started moving around the car. Church, whom Caboose could now see, was waving frantically. His head was bobbing up and down, up and down.

"Church is very silly," Caboose said. "I wonder why he is running towards us so slowly?"

"You must input a manual command to turn," Sheila said. "I may only assist you with steering."

"Okay, Sheila!" Caboose said. He looked around and realized there were a lot of buttons. "Do I use this?" he asked, pointing. It was almost like a video game!

"You use the controls, yes."

Caboose pressed a button, and smiled as he realized Church was getting closer. "Look!" he said, "he's waving at me!"

There was a loud _Boom!_ as Caboose pressed another button, and suddenly Church was falling.


End file.
